A SPRING CAROL.
BY MRS. A. A. BARNES.
Bright, balmy Spring! I greet thee now
With a hounding pulse and joyous brow;
Thy dewy breath, pure, soft, and bland,
Seems like a dream of a fairy land;
And open I throw the casement wide,
To inhale the dewy, delicious tide:
The fragrance soft of the budding trees
Is borne to me on the morning breeze;
The emerald turf is gemmed with dew,
That gleams like stars in the vault of blue;
The clouds are tinged with a rosy stain,
As the rising sun illumes the plain.
The early flowers, in their brightest bloom,
Have waked from their dark and cheerless tomb:
Sweet flowers! a halo and grace ye fling
Over the brow of the smiling spring;
Ye gladden the hearts in cottage homes
As freely as those in stateliest domes.
And the birds, the truants I watched for long,
Are greeting me now with carol and song;
From the "sunny south" they breathe to me,
In joyous chirp and wild song free,
The sweetest lays of a summer sky,
Where birds of glossiest plumage fly;
Where flowers are seen of the loveliest hue,
And the bending skies are softly blue;
Where the rippling waves of the dancing stream
Are kissed by the golden sunlight's gleam,
Whose banks are bright with the sheen of flowers
That rarely bloom in this clime of ours—
Blooms gorgeous enough to grace, I ween,
The brow of Oberon's fairy queen.
Sweet friend, I marvel, with skies like these,
Thou e'er shouldst tempt our northern breeze;
Yet welcome thou art as Spring's first green,
Pleasant to me as a bright "day-dream,"
That illumes for a while the sober sky,
And yet, like thee, too soon dost fly.